


a memory to use

by queerofcups



Series: fic advent 2017 [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 04:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups
Summary: A thousand moments stretch between them, but this is what matters: Phil’s things are packed up, prepared to be moved to a smaller flat, 5 miles away from this flat, the one they’d chosen together.





	a memory to use

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Dan and Phil break up."  
> Title from Adele's All I Ask.

“Hey,” Phil says, poking his head into the bedroom. “Everything’s packed up. Ready to go.”

Dan looks up from his computer, just looks at him for a minute.

The bedroom. His room now. Just his.

“Okay,” Dan says and can’t say anything else. A thousand moments stretch between them, but this is what matters: Phil’s things are packed up, prepared to be moved to a smaller flat, 5 miles away from this flat, the one they’d chosen together.

Dan thought the next time Phil would move it would be into their house.

“Dan?” Phil asks.

Dan realizes he hasn’t said anything in too long.

“Come here?” Dan asks and Phil hesitates.

The worst part about breakups, the worst part about this kind of break up is that it seems to never end.

Dan’s only broken up with one other person. The difference between a break up that consists of returning a few CDs and a hoodie and this is astounding.

They’d decided in January. It wasn’t the happiest birthday Phil’s ever had.

It’s been six months of this. Figuring out how to split their finances, what to do with their channels, who would say what.

In the middle of it all, Dan thought maybe something would change and they could just say nevermind. He hoped, imagined, pleaded with the universe that Phil would look up and see what Dan’s been seeing-- them today, and then a year ago, five years ago, eight years ago.

If someone asked Dan two years ago if he and Phil would ever break up, he’d have laughed in their face. Being separate seemed impossible, like living without half of his literal heart.

But, he supposes, Phil has been walking beside him from one impossibility to another for years now. This is just another step into the open air of unanswered what ifs.  
  
“Dan,” Phil says, the beginnings of a frown curling his mouth.

“I know,” Dan says. “I know we said we’d stop, but. This is the last night. You’re leaving in the morning. You’re leaving--”

He can’t make his mouth say you’re leaving me. He can’t make his brain believe it, or his heart.

Phil looks like he wants to argue, but eventually he sighs and comes into the room, flipping the light off as he comes. Dan closes his computer, shoves it to a far bit of the bed, and makes room for Phil.

He’s already dressed for bed, wearing terrible pajama pants Dan bought him for Christmas 2014. He walks the same, moves the same.

When Phil crawls into bed, he smells the same as he did a year ago, when Dan was so sure things were fine.

When Dan reaches out to him, he feels the same. He feels like home, and forever, and like they could only go up and on forever.

He feels like the best friend Dan will ever have.

“We’re not sleeping together, Dan.” Phil sounds exhausted. It’s fair. They’ve fucked more in the last six months than they had in the two years before. In retrospect, that probably should have been a sign.

“I know,” Dan says, and they both pretend Phil isn’t sliding a hand under his shirt as Dan gets settled against him.

They still fit together like two trees growing in too little space, curling around each other like pieces of a puzzle.

“I’m never going to find another you,” Dan says into the darkness. It’s always been easier, it’ll always be easier to say things into the darkness, with Phil’s breathing in his ear and Phil’s body pressed against his back.  
“Dan,” Phil sighs. “You will. There are a million me. People break up. And we’ll...we’ll always be friends. You’re too important to me.”

Dan closes his eyes. They’re dry. He’s spent the last half of the year crying, he can’t have any more tears to give. He just feels bone tired. He’s felt tired since their last screaming row, the last time he’d told Phil to leave.

“We were supposed to be it,” Phil keeps going. “But things change. People change.”

Dan doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t tell Phil that there won’t be another them. That there’s no one else for him.

Phil gently presses a wide-spread hand to Dan’s chest and whispers, “Talk to me.”

Dan pretends he doesn’t hear the reedy edge of crying in Phil’s voice. He’s gotten good at that.

There are things left to say, about ending the channels, about Phil coming back to collect his odds and ends, about what they still need to say to their friends. Dan wishes he had the energy to say something, anything, to make Phil feel better. But right now it feels like there’s only one thing left to say.

Instead he grabs Phil’s arm, pulls his hand out from under Dan’s shirt, presses his lips to each of Phil’s knuckles. They feel the same, just as knobbly and long. They fit between Dan’s fingers just the same. They’re missing a ring, but then again, there was never a ring there.

If Dan closes his eyes, it's just another night, another few minutes in bed just before they fall asleep.

“Do you remember,” he starts, and the bloom of tears surprises even him. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

Phil laughs and it sounds wet. “I think a few thousand people remember how we met. What about it?”

Dan sighs and moves backward, trying to get just a little closer, trying to find the bit of Phil’s skin that he hasn’t touched. Dan wants to know, if just for a night, that he’s seen and touched, and held all of him.

Phil wraps his arms around Dan’s waist, and it feels like an agreement that at least tonight, they can pretend that this is just another night, not an ending.

“This is the most fun I’ve ever had,” Dan says quietly, certain that Phil will hear him. “Ever, okay, Phil? This is the most fun I’ll ever have.”

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi, or seek your perseonalized apology, at queerofcups.tumblr.com


End file.
